Best Practice: License enforcement for Java Desktop application [closed]

Question

What is the best way to implement license enforcement in a Java application, so that the application cannot be "distributed" and used without the user purchasing the license?

Answer 1

Take a look at truelicense which is an open source framework for doing just that. If you want to make your own there is some documentation that explains the concepts and you can probably get some good ideas by looking at the code as well.

EDIT: worth mentioning that it is not a copy-protection scheme

Answer 2

I suggest you don't even attempt to add copy protection. You will just annoy people. You are much more likely to get sales if people like your product. Being petty and treating customers like thieves is not going to help. (Unless the product really sucks, and you have to prevent people from being able to try it before they buy.)

You might want to send a license key the sole purpose of which is to satisfy users that want to receive something for their money. Just add a status somewhere to show whether it has been paid for. The status needs to be reasonably obvious so that it is clear that something has happened (a product I worked on along time ago came on floppy two discs - half of the support calls were because the installer didn't ask for the second [win32s] disc).